6-Minute Trailer for CloudAtlas Offers First Look at Ambitious Adaptation

Six intricately, yet opaquely, intertwined tales come together in David Mitchell’s epic novel Cloud Atlas, so it seems apropos that the new trailer for the film adaptation would be a mini-tale encompassing all those stories.

Largely held together by the narration of Tom Hanks, who plays multiple roles, the nearly six-minute trailer starts — as Mitchell’s book does — with a ship’s journey through the South Pacific and spins out the interconnectedness of its characters across centuries and locations.

Considering just how ambitious the best-selling novel is, what Matrix siblings Lana and Andy Wachowski — working with Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer — have accomplished just with the extended trailer is phenomenally impressive. (The trailer is embedded above and viewable in high-def on Apple’s movie trailers website).

The filmmakers say they wanted to make a movie that would encompass a wide variety of themes and genres, from romance and drama to action and political intrigue. But they didn’t think there would ever be a story like that until they read Cloud Atlas. Then, after spending a year on a script, they vowed to kill the film if it didn’t get Mitchell’s blessing.

The author signed off. But even after that, they had a hard time getting the movie produced because so many in Hollywood thought the film was far too complicated and wouldn’t work with three directors.

“Unfortunately, in one way the experts were right: The movie is hard to sell, because it’s hard to describe, it’s hard to reduce,” the directors said in a video intro posted on Apple’s site. “So we decided to make a really, really, really long trailer and just put it out there. We hope you like it.”

So what’s here? Hanks, of course, who is credited as Dr. Henry Goose but who — as far as we can tell –doesn’t really show up as him in the trailer. Plus Halle Berry, playing both investigative journalist Luisa Rey and Meronym, a survivor from a technological apocalypse of sorts. There’s also a glimpse of Doona Bae as Sonmi-451, a clone waitress from the creepy Papa Song’s restaurant chain.

But what’s really stunning are eye-candy dishes full of the settings imagined in Mitchell’s novel, from the 19th century on the open seas to a techno-future we can only imagine to the world after its downfall in the wilds of Hawaii (looks like they put that $100 million estimated budget to good use).

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